Oral Argument
March 29, 2017 8:41 AM   Subscribe

A blowjob, therefore, never occurs in a vacuum. It is related to social expectations, especially to male expectations of productivity and work, but during the act itself these thoughts must fall away to make way for the implicit trust involved. To write a blowjob—within this social context and with the necessary nuance—is therefore achingly difficult. Even many of the great modernists fail to do so. Fellatio and Juliet: On the Hard Task of Writing About Blowjobs [NSFW]
posted by chavenet (50 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite


 
It is a hard task, indeed.
posted by Melismata at 8:43 AM on March 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


never occurs in a vacuum

That's not what I've heard.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:49 AM on March 29, 2017 [31 favorites]


A blowjob, therefore, never occurs in a vacuum.

The preferred nomenclature is mechanical companion.
posted by Beholder at 8:50 AM on March 29, 2017 [18 favorites]


Truly a mind blowing article.
posted by disclaimer at 9:11 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why is it every time I see "NSFW" I immediately click on it, especially if I'm at work?
posted by brokeaspoke at 9:13 AM on March 29, 2017 [32 favorites]


Wonder how hard it is to write about eating pussy? Just curious.
posted by strelitzia at 9:22 AM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]


"Fellatio" is one of those words that sounds like it could be a character in a Shakespeare play, but isn't.

See also "Portfolio."
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:33 AM on March 29, 2017 [34 favorites]


But during a blowjob, it is the man who remains passive as a woman or another man becomes active.

This one note description of a blowjob is sadly comical and makes me think the writer hasn't had many. Few people enjoy a passive partner, especially when they're giving said partner oral sex. Hell, based on the positions of the various participants, it's flat out impossible to be passive.

The overall point, of the difficult of writing sex scenes in general, has some merit. Too many come off as literal descriptions of the body and parts and fail to evoke the emotion of the moment. The best one I can recall off hand was written by Douglas Coupland, where he described a male and his girlfriend playing catch in a forest. The rhythm and sound of the ball (ha ha) landing in the mitt as the two characters gradually moved physically close to each was enchanting and did a great job of setting the tone.

But that was also a non-smut book and I've read plenty of smut that was hot, just in a different way.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:34 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


That was the male-gaziest Updikean article on blowjobs I've ever read.

I'm still sort of stunned, it's such a shocking departure from the fiction I read and write. I mean, I specifically swore off that particular genre of (almost always) White Male Literary Fiction for a reason, but I guess I had forgotten it was still there.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:39 AM on March 29, 2017 [30 favorites]


I was once a bad person and told a friend that the Filet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonald's was pronounced "Fellatio Fish".
posted by lagomorphius at 9:41 AM on March 29, 2017 [57 favorites]


That sucked.
posted by jonmc at 9:42 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


All your favorite blowjobs suck.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:55 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]


How hard can it be?

"He/she accepted his member [adverb]."
posted by tillermo at 10:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm still sort of stunned, it's such a shocking departure from the fiction I read and write. I mean, I specifically swore off that particular genre of (almost always) White Male Literary Fiction for a reason, but I guess I had forgotten it was still there.

Yeah, I was shocked anew at a) how anti-hot all this is and b) how male gazey. While I can't entirely say I disagree with the ultimate thesis, that you're inevitably writing about the relationship of power and power balances when you're writing about blowjobs, I still found myself repelled by the way Delistraty wrote about it. God, literary fiction is frequently so gross about sex, and not just/only in the physical description of it, but in all this weird subtext too. I'll take a hundred awful and improbable sex scenes in fan fiction over just one of these horrible professor gets a blowjob from a student half his age literary "masterpieces." Ugh.

Anyway, 95% of all fan fiction is garbage, but porn in fic is still uniformly better than just about anything you'll find professionally published, and the best of it even does decent character work on top of being hot. The hottest blowjob scene I've read in years was in a fic I read last year, and it managed to be a) hot b) not physically implausible or gross c) in character d) explored the relationship of power and power dynamics seemingly inherent in the act of fellatio that this article talks about without getting at all gross or heterocentric or demeaning about it.
posted by yasaman at 10:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [26 favorites]


Mefi should totally a one off zine filled with descriptions of oral sex. JUST BECAUSE. Call it Eat Me.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:06 AM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]


[INSERT BLOWJOB PUN HERE]
posted by dersins at 10:08 AM on March 29, 2017


I feel like this article was written by someone who's never been involved in a blow job.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 10:10 AM on March 29, 2017


@yasaman: LINK PLZ.
posted by ZakDaddy at 10:14 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


The fic in question is Single Use Weapon, which was one of my favorite things I read last year, for the very short-lived NBC show Kings. You can probably read it with little familiarity with the show, given that it's an adaptation of the biblical story of David and Jonathan; just take a quick look at the show's wiki page. The fic itself is a great yarn about espionage and kingship and fealty. You can skip ahead to the end to the truly excellent sex scene, but you'd be missing out on the rest.
posted by yasaman at 10:28 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Mefi should totally a one off zine filled with descriptions of oral sex. JUST BECAUSE. Call it Eat Me.

There's already been a Kickstarter comic with the title.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:30 AM on March 29, 2017


I would assume they mean hard for like traditionally published writers. Because fanfiction writers write them left, right, center, twice on Tuesday and for the Queen's birthday like they're sprinkles being added to a cake. They appear in a wide scatter shot across Ao3 like a sneeze. Any flavor you want, ending imagined, alien or mythical creature? It's there. Explicit or written in metaphor. There are more blow jobs written in fanfiction than there are reflections of a person getting a blow job standing between two mirrors facing each other.

So maybe ask them.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:34 AM on March 29, 2017 [9 favorites]


Mefi should totally a one off zine filled with descriptions of oral sex. JUST BECAUSE. Call it Eat Me.

*plunks down fistful of money*

Advance ordering a copy. Right here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:39 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was once a bad person and told a friend that the Filet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonald's was pronounced "Fellatio Fish".

The sandwich that eats you!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


How would this article read differently if you were to put in the word "cunnilingus" every time the word "fellatio" appeared? As it stands, without comparing the power dynamics between both oral sex practices, this is pretty useless. And is it possible that sex--oral and otherwise--can be more about pleasure than power, more about love than control?

Asking for a friend.
posted by kozad at 10:51 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


To be fair, "male-gaziest Updikean article" would be a good user name.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:02 AM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]


And is it possible that sex--oral and otherwise--can be more about pleasure than power, more about love than control?

Ah, but then it would just be titillating porn, wouldn't it? Never mind that making an oral sex scene about pleasure can reveal just as much about the characters as making it about power can. I think this article's failure to concede that it's even a possibility that an oral sex scene can be about love and pleasure is unfortunately telling. I suppose there's no room for that in modernist literary fiction.
posted by yasaman at 11:03 AM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


On the other hand, one of the prime texts for the article is Houellebecq, and I'm not sure what can be learned about common humanity from that font.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:07 AM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


.
posted by b33j at 11:12 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


And is it possible that sex--oral and otherwise--can be more about pleasure than power, more about love than control?

“All happy fellatios are alike; each unhappy fellatio is unhappy in its own way.”
posted by straight at 11:29 AM on March 29, 2017 [23 favorites]


I'll take a hundred awful and improbable sex scenes in fan fiction over just one of these horrible professor gets a blowjob from a student half his age literary "masterpieces."

What shocks me about the Sad Boner Professor genre is that it still exists despite the fact that the ur-parody of it was already written by Nabokov well over half a century ago. And Nabokov isn't a woman, so the guys who write Sad Boner Professor novels have probably read him.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:30 AM on March 29, 2017 [37 favorites]


NSFW for me, not because we can't have conversations about literary sex in my workplace, but because the implicit essentialism, heterocentrism, and cissexism displayed make me want to scream at the screen. And maybe I'm just a dysfunctional unicorn, but the assumption that the receiver always comes on top feels a heck of a lot like rape denial. Yes, I know that literary sex is a reflection of cultural dysfunction.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:57 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


"sad boner professor genre" is the term i didn't know i needed until just now. it's perfect.

i have favorited everyone who has brought up fanfiction in this thread. it's like this huge cultural blindspot; if people are even aware of it, it's usually as a joke. male literary authors can get a bunch of attention by posting their myopic musings on the art of writing erotic scenes - nevermind that fanfic authors have been discussing it to death, in a more self-aware way, probably since before spock first blew kirk in a turbolift.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:12 PM on March 29, 2017 [19 favorites]


Looks like I goofed the proper title of the genre, Sad Boner Confessional. In my defence, it's not uncommon for the boner confessor in these things to be a professor as well, so yeah.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:36 PM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


Why is it every time I see "NSFW" I immediately click on it, especially if I'm at work?

The same reason people have an irresistible urge to touch anything with a "wet paint" sign on it.
posted by TedW at 12:56 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


plz back the kickstarter for my new graphic novel Sad Professor: Boner Confessor
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:01 PM on March 29, 2017 [32 favorites]


I'm just amazed no one has mentioned "plo chops" yet.
posted by conic at 1:32 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


"But during a blowjob, it is the man who remains passive as a woman or another man becomes active. It is one of the few instances in a man's life in which both pleasure and lack of work are reconciled, as he does not feel that he must do work to improve his situation."

Um, it has not been my experience that men as a class of people must constantly work to improve their situation in our society. Compared to the people giving them blowjobs. Just sayin...
posted by Concordia at 2:05 PM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


"i have favorited everyone who has brought up fanfiction in this thread. it's like this huge cultural blindspot; if people are even aware of it, it's usually as a joke. male literary authors can get a bunch of attention by posting their myopic musings on the art of writing erotic scenes - nevermind that fanfic authors have been discussing it to death, in a more self-aware way, probably since before spock first blew kirk in a turbolift."

I'm not sure how many people realize that there's non-erotic fanfic out there. Which is probably tied to the fact that middlebrow white dudes get to call their fanfic "literature" (e.g. Seven Percent Solution, Ragtime).
posted by klangklangston at 2:15 PM on March 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


I never thought an article about people getting sucked off, or sucking others off would be so tentative, so hermeneutically mild, so...unsatisfying
posted by clockzero at 2:26 PM on March 29, 2017


Brandon Blatcher This may be coming from the slang seen in old gay personal ads, where French Active meant fellator, and French Passive meant fellatee.

Anyway, this whole discussion is Greek to me (hee hee see also Greek Active/Passive), since for me, the language centers in my brain pretty much shut down during sex, so it's really difficult for me to describe. The only written depictions of fellatio that have seemed realistic to me were the crappy little stories in gay porn magazines.
posted by conic at 2:45 PM on March 29, 2017


I'm not sure how many people realize that there's non-erotic fanfic out there.

No, because it was drowned in a tide of a/b/o mpreg.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:40 PM on March 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


To follow Houellebecq's logic of power slightly further, the fellatio scene is the most arousing type of sex scene to a reader or viewer because it renders the receiver—a position in which the reader or viewer can easily imagine himself—resolutely in control while still allowing him to witness the giver's belief in his or her own power. "If fellatio is the queen figure of porn cinema," Houellebecq writes, also in that preface, "it is not only because men adore this caress; it is also that, sometimes, when the camera lingers on the woman's face for a long time, catching both her gaze and the movements of her tongue, one feels something pass of her emotion, her gluttony." The giver believes, or can be imagined to believe, that they are getting the better end of the deal even as the receiver knows this to be false.

These are the rantings of the improperly-fellated.

Also, generally speaking, Houellebecq can go shit in his hat.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:07 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Mefi should totally a one off zine filled with descriptions of oral sex. JUST BECAUSE. Call it Eat Me.

There's already been a Kickstarter comic with the title.


Call it BlowMe.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:16 PM on March 29, 2017


Um, it has not been my experience that men as a class of people must constantly work to improve their situation in our society. Compared to the people giving them blowjobs.

Unless you're a Trump, everybody has to constantly work to improve their situation. Being born with a dong is no guarantee of an easy life.

Also, it sounds like you're assuming "the people giving them blowjobs" are all women?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:57 PM on March 29, 2017


Mefi should totally a one off zine filled with descriptions of oral sex. JUST BECAUSE. Call it Eat Me.

..."Can I Eat This", surely.
posted by skycrashesdown at 7:06 PM on March 29, 2017 [26 favorites]


I feel like about once a year we get a review piece discussing how literary fiction demonstrates some of the worst values of commercial pornography, but that's ok because doing so is honest or insightful. Usually I find that intensely upsetting, cranking both my ongoing gender trouble and phobias regarding sexuality to the maximum. That's not how I imagine being sexual with another person.

And particularly the figurative language discussed at the end of the article is horrible. Are we supposed to laugh at Houellebecq as a transparent pig, or with him for exposing the poverty of language with two words evocative of violence and dehumanization? If that's "success" in literature then please help me get the fuck out of the human race.

No, because it was drowned in a tide of a/b/o mpreg.

Frankly, I'm really glad that Moonlight didn't take the obvious route of showing oral or anal sex, because the last thing I want to read about that movie is fandom debating top/bottom dynamics. Which I think loosely ties back into linked post where sex without power roleplay is unthinkable for most writers and many audiences. Not, I think for McCraney, who somehow managed to capture sex (that many wouldn't even consider sex!) as a messy, wonderful, complicated, and life-changing thing even without all the conventional storytelling cliches of top/bottom, user/used, seducer/seduced.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:36 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


When I was scrolling about trying to find this thread again I started to click on this heading before I caught myself. I'm still giggling about it.

"Oh god, it tastes like mashed potato now. Why? I don't know!"
posted by lagomorphius at 12:07 PM on March 30, 2017


Garlic or homestyle?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:55 PM on March 30, 2017


Frankly, I'm really glad that Moonlight didn't take the obvious route of showing oral or anal sex

I have spent the past day repeatedly thinking of this comment and wondering why that would be "obvious" in an 80s dramedy procedural about an ex-model running a detective agency with Bruce Willis? Also, how was it that nobody else posted any sort of followup argument or objection? Was I the only one who missed that subtext?

Like, I spaced out for a minute in the middle of a conference call thinking about this. I think I may have written some fanfiction about it in my mind (and I'm gonna guess I'm not the first).

I'm so relieved now. So relieved.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:22 PM on March 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


Made the same connection, thinking of the show Moonlighting and how even the stars had a brief relationship, so it all fit.

Heh, "fit".
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:16 AM on March 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


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